Hobbits – 1

3 thoughts on “Hobbits – 1”

1. Robert Harrell

   June 20, 2015 at 2:04 pm

   Here’s a quote to go with your rambling, Ben.
   “Despair, or folly?’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.’
   ‘At least for a while,’ said Elrond. ‘The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strenght nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”
   – The Council of Elrond at Rivendell, The Fellowship of the Ring

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2. Robert Harrell

   June 20, 2015 at 2:16 pm

   Another analogy / metaphor is Camazotz from A Wrinkle in Time. The place, named for a malignant Mayan deity worshipped as a dark and evil vampire, is the epitome of “standardization”:
   >>In Camazotz, every house is the exact same size, shape, and color. In front of each house, children bounce balls and skip rope in a synchronized rhythm that seems to govern the whole town. One boy drops his ball and when the children knock on the door to return it to the mother, she is horrified by this “Aberration.” The children are then confronted by a paper delivery boy on a bicycle, who asks them what they are doing out of doors. He informs them that they live in the most oriented city on the planet, governed by IT in the CENTRAL Central Intelligence. When the boy rides off, Charles Wallace notes that he seems to talk as though the words were not his own. Charles concentrates very hard to try to listen to the thoughts of these people, to figure out who they are, but all he hears is a steady pulsing.
   >>… there is no room for love amidst an overwhelming demand for conformity, order, and logical explanation.<<
   http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/wrinkle/section6.rhtml

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3. John Piazza

   June 20, 2015 at 11:26 pm

   “… and let the rest – all those poor kids who get in the way – be tossed aside because they waste the time of the teacher and of those few kids who are serious and “want to learn”?
   Ben, this is at the very heart of what Latin teachers are dealing with right now. We have always catered to these students, thinking that we are doing right by keeping our little oases alive for these “motivated” students. Any language teacher who says to themselves or to their students: “there is only room for serious students here” is doing an injustice.

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